Chapter 67 Renzong Chapter 9 The South Wind Overwhelms the North Wind
Chapter 2192 Renzong Chapter 9 The South Wind Overwhelms the North Wind
People are always like this. Only when they lose something do they know how to cherish it. When Mr. Fan paid his seal and resigned from his post, refused to say goodbye, and left the south of Beijing in desolation, there were countless people in the court who sighed because of this, including many in the imperial court.
The courtiers and subordinates who worked hard and exerted their utmost efforts in the matter of "inverting the model" have a clear reputation as officials.
Of course, what best reflects the people's support is the reaction of the middle and lower class people in Luoyang. In the street talks, there is full of reluctance. Some people even directly said: "First go to Bao Fuyin, and then get rid of Fan Xianggong.
It is hard for the people and the people to find peace."
In the ninth year of Zhengtong, Bao Zheng, who had been in the position of Luoyang Prefecture for six full years, was finally pushed out of the capital, and Fan Zhongyan could not stop him. However, due to the huge reputation and excellence Bao Zheng accumulated while serving in Luoyang Prefecture,
As a result, Bao Zheng was promoted and was appointed as the southeast transfer envoy to dominate the southeast's financial power. This is an important task.
After the news of Fan Zhongyan's death came, the capital was even more excited. From the official to the private sector, memorial and remembrance activities continued. Fan Zhongyan, who had resigned from the post of prime minister, had resumed his role as a loyal minister who was famous all over the world. After his death,
, he is almost regarded as a contemporary "sage".
Emperor Liu Weizhen was naturally alarmed and issued an edict to commemorate Fan Zhongyan's memory and abolish the court for seven days. Although he did not attend court on weekdays except for normal court meetings. At the same time, he asked Ouyang Xiu to write a Shinto monument for Fan Zhongyan with his pen.
arts.
Finally, after discussion at the court, Liu Weizhen ordered that Fan Zhongyan be granted the posthumous title of Marquis of Pingjiang, and later generations called him "Fan Pingjiang". Of course, the one who was most frequently called was "Fan Wenzhen Gong", because of his posthumous title Wenzhen.
In the more than ten years since Fan Zhongyan's death, civil servants and scholars of the Han Empire created a large number of poems and songs related to Fan Zhongyan. Among them, they not only praised Fan Zhongyan's personal conduct and achievements, but also commemorated that period.
and remembrance.
After all, judging from the subsequent development of the Han Empire, the five or six years that Fan Zhongyan was in power were regarded as the "last afterglow" of Emperor Sejong's Jianlong reign.
From the historical annals, case books, and writing materials left over from the Zhengtong period, we can have a relatively comprehensive understanding of the political, military, and economic achievements and achievements of the Han Empire during Fan Zhongyan's reign. In particular, some economic data can best reflect that period.
The state of the Han Empire.
In the eighth year of Zhengtong (1049), Fan Zhongyan promoted a large-scale and all-round statistics on the empire. Although it is inaccurate, it can be seen from the most convincing official data of the empire:
At that time, the number of people registered in Dingkou of the Han Empire exceeded 200 million. This obviously did not include the domestic servants, retinues, and tenants maintained by nobles, bureaucrats, landlords, and merchants, as well as the millions of people who submitted to various feudal states.
, there are also a large number of illegal accounts caused by tax avoidance or poor management and statistics.
The orthodox seven-year imperial tax, local tax, commercial tax, customs duties, transaction tax, salt, iron, tea and sugar franchise, official property, job fields and mining tax, gold and silver smelting input and other inputs have reached a level of fiscal input.
700 million.
Of course, this figure is significantly different from when Jianlong was at his peak. Going back fifteen or sixteen years, the empire's fiscal revenue at that time could approach 200 million yuan per year. However, at that time, the Han Empire was in the midst of the turmoil of Emperor Sejong.
At the peak of his rule, the politics were clear and clear, the system was sound, the execution was high, the supervision was strong, the rivers were clean and the sea was peaceful, and the barbarians were all in peace.
The country's cultivated land area has also exceeded 10 million hectares. From south to north, from east to west, various climate environments, paddy fields, dry land, terraced fields, and imperial fields have been cultivated in various forms.
It can be said that during Fan Zhongyan's reign, the Han Empire still had a solid material foundation. However, the imperial family had a large business, a wide range of businesses, and various expenditures were equally huge.
Needless to say, there is no need to mention the traditional and basic expenditures of raising soldiers, officials, officials, and nobles. Since the late period of King Sejong, it goes without saying that the imperial court has been increasingly redundant and wasteful.
The key is that in the years from the sixth to the twelfth year of Zhengtong, the Han Empire was not peaceful. There were constant natural and man-made disasters, especially in Hebei. A severe drought that lasted for several years caused land waste, reduced food production, brought famine, and social conflicts.
Rapidly intensified, turmoil and epidemics followed.
While the empire was developing forward, various contradictions were also accumulating rapidly. The most concentrated outbreak was the "Wang Ze Uprising", which was very wide in scope and affected more than 30 counties in five states. There were many rebels.
When the army was strong, its size once approached one hundred thousand.
The outbreak of Wang Ze's uprising was essentially due to the corruption of the imperial nobility and bureaucracy, and the continuous expansion of the scholar-bureaucrat and landlord class, which led to the intensification of the oppression and exploitation of the people. When successive natural disasters struck, the rentier class took the opportunity to cause trouble, and the local officials were slow and improper in dealing with it.
, and under the influence of the "Maitreya Doctrine", a large-scale rebellion broke out in Hebei, which had been the core ruling area of the Han Empire since its founding.
In order to quell the rebellion in Hebei, the imperial court also spent a huge price, deploying tens of thousands of troops and spending tens of millions of dollars. Hundreds of thousands of officials and civilians were killed and injured. In fact, it broke Fan Zhongyan's balance and coordination with the court and made him
Abandoned more in-depth reforms and improvements.
In the end, Fan Zhongyan's resignation as prime minister was directly related to the Hebei rebellion.
While the drought in Hebei finally eased and the rebellion gradually subsided, drought also occurred in the prosperous and prosperous southeastern region of the empire, and in the Jianghuai River, which transported a large amount of taxes, grain and rice to the capital every year. The severity was no less serious than that in Hebei.
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With the Hebei Rebellion in front of them, the imperial court no longer dared to be careless, and allocated a large part of its energy to disaster relief and relief work in the Jianghuai River. Although there were constant troubles in this process, under the rule of the Jianghuai River,
It was only through class-conscious prevention and control that major troubles were avoided in the two places.
Compared with Hebei, the drought that occurred in Jianghuai actually had a greater impact on the empire. From the perspective of subsequent development, it profoundly changed the political situation of the empire. The south wind prevailed over the north wind, which is why the Jianghuai drought
The severe drought was the turning point.
The southeastern region has always occupied an important pillar position in the empire's fiscal and tax territory. This is unquestionable and has sufficient data to support it.
The economic base determines the superstructure. However, a hundred years after the founding of the country, the imperial aristocrats, bureaucrats, and nobles who represent the interests of the southeast region have not received corresponding political status. The top-level ruling resources of the empire are still firmly controlled by traditional
Occupied by northern military nobles and the Northern Scholars Group.
This is obviously an extremely serious contradiction, especially when the economic development in the southeast is on the rise, and the northern group does not dare to look sideways and is unable to suppress it, it becomes even more acute.
The most direct impact of the severe drought in the Jianghuai River at that time was that Kaifeng and Luoyang, two capitals with a population of one million, began to suffer from food shortages. In the capital cities, food prices were high and public complaints were boiling. The imperial court also took targeted measures.
For example, opening up official warehouses, adjusting grain from the two lakes, Guannei, Sichuan and Sichuan, and even issuing special policies to encourage merchants to buy grain and rice from overseas feudal countries
However, these measures, while increasing the court's expenditure, will inevitably cause a burden on the people in the Guan, Lianghu, Sichuan and Sichuan areas. The central court still has moral integrity, but it really cannot prevent a series of people from taking advantage of it.
The impact affects the whole body, and social class conflicts in other places will also deepen, especially in the Guan Nei Road, and the influence in the Guan Nei Road can radiate to the entire northwest. Therefore, after decades of tranquility in the northwest, where people's sentiments are complicated,
Unrest has begun to arise again.
Of course, many deep-seated contradictions and influences always require enough time to ferment and provide corresponding opportunities before they break out. However, eleven years after the orthodoxy, the imperial center had to make careful political and economic calculations due to the severe drought in the Yangtze River and Huaihe River.
account.
The capital is short of grain. Due to the severe drought in the Yangtze River and Huaihe River, the grain and rice exported to Beijing from the southeast have decreased. However, the court's solution relies heavily on the southern states, including the grain purchased from the Nanyang feudal states, which mainly enters the Jianghai Customs.
Then transfer to Beijing.
Therefore, in the later years of Fan Zhongyan's reign, the imperial court could no longer take the southern ruling group seriously, and had to face more voices and demands from the southern nobles, bureaucrats, and gentry.
To sum up, during Fan Zhongyan's reign, the south officially began to overtake the north in the upper echelons of Han Empire rule. This was a major change brought about by the combination of economics and politics.
Not to mention the influence of those northern aristocrats who continued to go south and integrated with the local area over the long years. Fan Zhongyan was the southern minister. Being able to become the minister already illustrates the trend.
It remains to be seen what the pros and cons of this change will be for the rule of the Han Empire, especially its unity and stability.